Ordinalista

Ordinalista is a term used to describe a person or theoretical position that emphasizes ordinal relations—rankings or orderings—over cardinal measurements. The label is most commonly encountered in economics and social choice theory, where it designates adherence to ordinalism, the view that preferences or utilities need only be ordered, not measured in absolute numerical units.

In economics, ordinalists argue that consumer behavior can be modeled using preference orderings and indifference curves without assigning cardinal utility levels. This perspective became influential in the 20th century through the work of economists associated with the so-called ordinalist revolution, who showed that many comparative statics and welfare statements can be derived from ordinal information alone. Ordinal utility functions are unique up to monotone increasing transformations, reflecting the idea that only relative ranking matters.

In social choice and voting theory, ordinalist approaches treat individual inputs as rankings (preferences over alternatives) rather than cardinal utilities. Many voting methods and collective decision rules are based on ordinal ballots and are evaluated on how they aggregate orderings into social choices.

Criticisms of ordinalism note that ordinality discards intensity-of-preference information and complicates interpersonal comparisons of welfare or utility. Defenders argue that ordinal models are parsimonious, empirically tractable, and sufficient for a wide range of theoretical results. The term may also be used more broadly to describe any intellectual stance prioritizing order relations over quantitative magnitudes.